A major focus of homogeneous catalysis research at BASF during the last ten years has been the application of equipment and concepts developed for petrochemistry in fine chemical projects. One area of particular interest has been asymmetric catalysis. An efficient chiral catalyst has been developed for the hydrogenation of a,p-unsaturated carbonyl complexes, enones, to yield saturated, chiral, -branched aldehydes. This catalyst is closely related to catalysts already well known in hydroformylation chemistry. It has proved possible to correlate many of the key observations in process development with the behavior of the catalyst system at a molecular level. A highly efficient catalyst recycling concept has been realized and used to develop an efficient 3-step route to L-menthol starting from citral.
展开▼
